Okay, so this is going to be the two-part '2012 in Review' for movies...I'm going to start with what I didn't like. Surprised? More accurately, what I'll be starting with is the 'disappointments' section - i.e. not the worst movies I saw all year or even necessarily terrible, but simply the ones that built up the most hype and weren't nearly as good as I wanted them to be. Oh, how cruel the cinema gods can be. Here they are, in no real order:
DISAPPOINTMENTS
The Dark
Knight Rises
This is
something I’ve been waiting to see for like, four years since the excellent The
Dark Knight blew open the gates back in 2008. Christopher Nolan has been
getting bigger and bigger over the years, and I really think it’s gotten to his
head with The Dark Knight Rises – while previous films of his were accessible
while still providing thought provoking themes and intelligent writing, The
Dark Knight Rises finally sees Nolan crumbling under the weight of his own ego
with a lot of style but very little substance. There is just so much going on
in this movie that it’s impossible at first to catch any kind of meaning or
coherent themes, but about halfway through you realize that there really isn’t
anything worthwhile. The themes in this are rehashed and not very well thought
out, and the movie just doesn’t have the same kind of intelligent writing as
the previous two. The action is sometimes pretty decent, and there are some
very good scenes here and there, but overall the plot is ludicrous and the film
overall is generic and shallow, far beneath the best that Nolan can give us.
Prometheus
Another one
that got a lot of hype. I was skeptical because, well, Ridley Scott made
Hannibal a few years back and that is one of my least favorite films of all
time. And likewise, I wasn’t exactly disappointed with this, because Prometheus
overall isn’t that good. But it starts out with a lot of promise, and has some
fascinating concepts set up – however, the film does not DO anything with these
concepts. Halfway through the film, any pretense of intelligence is dropped in
favor of pretty standard sci fi action cliches and storytelling tropes that don’t
really set up any drama or tension. It’s boring, it’s silly, it’s over-long…it’s
just not a good film.
Looper
I like Looper
better than the other two movies on this list, but I was really looking forward
to this and figured it would be the sci-fi action movie to beat this year – I was
wrong. While this is pretty good, and has a neat concept behind it, as well as
a cool atmosphere and some good action here and there…it’s just not great. It
drags on too long, the pace is disjointed and sluggish and neither Bruce Willis
nor Joseph Gordon-Levitt really gives a great, captivating performance like I
know they’re capable of – they both seem subdued, actually. This is
entertaining enough, but not as good as I wanted it to be.
***
And now, without further ado...the worst, most despicable, poorly written, poorly directed and hateable movies I saw in 2012! Counting down from #5 to #1...
WORST MOVIES OF 2012
5. The Words
Sappy
melodrama with absolutely no basis in reality. I did not believe a minute of
this; not the characters, their reactions to situations or the situation
itself, and the bizarrely disjointed pacing and boring dialogue didn’t help
either. Just a weak, weak movie and I’m not really sure what the intended
audience was supposed to be. Skip it.
4. Silent
House
Awful crap,
but at least it isn’t just tired and rehashed like the other two horror movies
on this list – no, Silent House finds new ways to be horrible, such as camera
work so bad it makes most found-footage movies look like they were shot by
Spielberg, and this isn’t even a found footage movie at all, which is almost as
hilarious as it is sad. And a needlessly garish plot thread about incest near
the end, dumped on you with as much finesse as an elephant trying to fit its
way into a small trailer. Silent House is a dubious and tasteless movie that I
would not recommend to anyone.
3. The
Possession
This is a
terrible film without anything recommendable about it, from the rehashed and
tired storyline to the awful acting from pretty much everyone in the film to
the horrible characters, who are about as likable as toe mold. The Possession
is pretty much as vapid and thoughtless a film as you can get unless you’re…well,
the two films above it on my “worst of” list, which are…
2. The Devil
Inside
I already
went on a rant about this one in my review, but seriously, it’s bad. Everyone in
the world has tried their hand at a ‘demonic possession’ film in the last few
years and this is the worst one I have ever seen. Back when Exorcism of Emily
Rose came out in like 2005, this kind of thing was still a little interesting,
but a movie like The Devil Inside has no place existing in 2013. Or ever, in
any reality, at all, for that matter. Throw this in the incinerator and forget
all about it.
1. Cloud
Atlas
I haven’t
walked out of a movie this angry since Edge of Darkness a few years back. Cloud
Atlas is a nadir of sorts; a miracle of insipidly bad Hallmark cards set to a
mind-numbing three-hour runtime that will make you want to commit mass genocide
once it’s over. This is so preachy, so pretentious, so full of itself and so
obsessed with its own holier-than-thou goodness…that I literally can’t even
describe it in words to you and convey exactly how sappy, poorly written and
embarrassingly sentimental this is. The fact that it has seven or eight
different, poorly written stories going on is bad, and the fact that all of
them amount to the insultingly simplistic and patronizing message of “stand up
against oppression” is worse, but really what it comes down to is the whole
picture – the fact that so much money, so many good actors, so many special
effects and studio tricks, went into producing those two aspects – that seals
the deal. Cloud Atlas, you are the worst movie of the year.
When I saw the trailer for this movie, the only thing I had to know to
get me HYPED was that it was about a time-travel organization that sends people
back to the past so a hitman can shoot them. The fact that it had Bruce Willis
and Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing a future and present version of the same
person – made problematic by the fact that Willis, the future self, was sent
back in time for his past-self, Levitt, to assassinate – was only icing on the
cake. It took me many months of waiting for it to come out and many weeks of
trying to find free time to see it AND…it’s OK.
Yeah. Just OK. I really wish I could say this movie was the next
masterpiece, and that it would end up on my year’s Top 10 List, but Looper is
sadly just a solid movie, with some pros weighed out by some cons.
I like the atmosphere this movie has – the whole dystopian future with
tropes of the Wild West and the 1940s mob era. It’s seriously cool, and done
subtly enough so that it doesn’t feel like a cartoon like Repo or Sin City, so
everything does have a very gritty and hard-assed feel to it that doesn’t come
off as contrived. Maybe this grimy, crime-ridden hellhole of a future is a
little too over the top dark at points, but mostly I got used to it ten minutes
in and accepted the setting as naturally dark and seedy. I always hate when
movies act like the future will be inevitably shittier than today’s world – it’s
fear-mongering crap and lazy writing to boot, but Looper pulls it off fairly
well.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the greatest actors working today, only
lately he just hasn’t been picking parts that show that talent. He was pretty
annoying in The Dark Knight Rises and in this he does OK, but really I think
director Rian Johnson was more focused on getting a good Bruce Willis
impression out of him rather than a good performance. Still pretty fun to
watch, even though it’s kind of like watching a kid dressing up as his favorite
movie star for Halloween.
The plot about time-travel assassins and a more efficient way to
dispose of bodies is really cool, and had a lot of potential. For a while it’s
very well done, and bright spots pop up until the very end of the film, but
overall it’s kind of baggy and unfocused. The first half hour is set in the
grungy, dirty city and focuses on Levitt’s everyday life, and we learn some
stuff about the organization of “loopers” that kill people sent from the
future. It’s a lot to buy, but eh, at least it’s interesting a little bit…and
there’s some stuff about ‘psychic’ kids who can do minor telekinesis stuff.
After Willis is introduced, it basically becomes a different movie. I
mean it’s like night and day…suddenly we see a whole future for Levitt’s
character in which he grows up into Bruce Willis and gets married to a
beautiful woman, who is accidentally killed when the “looper” organization
comes to call for him. So he escapes and runs back to the past to kill the
kingpin who ordered him captured in the first place, thinking if he can do
that, then his wife won’t be killed. Unfortunately, in Levitt’s time period,
all the people who might be the kingpin called the Rainmaker are little
children, and so we get a bunch of scenes of child murder in the middle of the
movie. Bet you didn’t expect that!
After that we get introduced to some other characters, namely a mother
and her son living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, of which the son is one
of the kids Willis is hunting. Levitt hides out with them aiming to protect them
and kill Willis when he shows up. We get some decent character development, a
few commercial scenes like Levitt and the woman having sex, and some scenes to
show how the child is psychic and can’t control it yet. It’s all pretty
standard stuff for a set-up like this, and is done rather well, though I would
have liked something a little less mainstream-y. Oh well.
The climax is pretty good, although it gets pretty pretentious as well,
but the whole movie kind of was anyway, with lots of very self-indulgent
camerawork and the whole thing being rather into itself. The pretension does
make this a grander, more epic film than it would have been otherwise, but I
wish the movie itself had been stronger to compensate that.
Overall I think this was more suited to be a three or four-part TV
special on HBO or something rather than a feature film, as it just feels
disjointed and cluttered and ultimately too long, even at only two hours –
there have been longer movies this year by far, but Looper just kind of drags, with a few pointless characters and over-long scenes not aiding that fact. I have no qualms with the story or characters except that they
could have been serviced with a better movie to make their depth more apparent –
here we mostly just get a straightforward and frankly dull approach that
neuters what complexity there could have been with a plot like this. Looper is
entertaining, but it’s entertaining mostly in spite of itself, and for a better
Rian Johnson-directed flick starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I’d recommend Brick.
I apologize in advance for the excessively gory images that you are about to see. But if they stop even one person from watching this horrible movie, then I've done my job well.
Urban legends are like the modern oral folklore. One could say they are
simply a passing-down of the traditions from times before man had the written
word to convey expressions and stories. If that’s the case, then Candyman is
the modern equivalent of stories back then told by dumbass 15 year olds trying
to scare their little siblings with tons of tasteless gore.
I really don’t know where to begin with this. It’s not like the movie
has absolutely nothing going for it…they have a cool setting and they start off
with a decent build up. But after that? Nothing. Even worse than movies that
are all-out bad from the start are the ones that have something going but then do nothing with it, like a cool
looking car that peters out on you after twenty minutes on the freeway without
even hitting 80 mph. And to top it all off, this is another tale “inspired” by
the “brilliance” of that lovable Clive Barker…my heart can barely contain its
joy…
Well we start off with some idiot telling a story about a girl who
cheated on her boyfriend while babysitting with…Joseph Gordon-Levitt from
Looper?
Well, as long as Bruce Willis didn't come back trying to kill a bunch of little kids, I think it's OK that he's in this house where his girlfriend is babysitting.
And they have a rather bizarre method of foreplay…telling stories about
a supernatural serial killer called Candyman who appears when you say his name
five times in a mirror and then guts and disembowels you with a bloody meat
hook. They even start groping one another and the girl even takes off her shirt
while they’re talking about this! How perfectly insane!
"Oh baby, talking about people getting murdered with a rusty hook and disemboweled really turns me on! Almost as much as picking each others' noses or talking about our embarrassing bowel movements after eating Chipotle!"
Anyway, they get killed and we get introduced to the real main
characters – Highlander 2 survivor Virginia Madsen and her best friend, Token
Intelligent Sophisticated Black Woman. They’re doing a study on urban legends
for a graduate school class, and throughout the first half hour we get a lot of
different people telling stories to them, sometimes when they don’t even plan
it, about various urban legends they hear of, including the Candyman story. It’s
kind of hokey, but it actually does create some suspense…suspense that the rest
of the movie will fail to live up to.
Madsen’s husband is a dorky looking professor at the same school,
because that happens so much! And their marriage is so good that she immediately gets jealous whenever a young girl
even looks at him the wrong way…yeah, I’m sure she’s a great catch…pfft.
Madsen and her friend discover an interesting fact about their
apartment building; that it was actually built the same way as another building
called Cabrini Green where everyone apparently lives in fear of the Candyman
who was mentioned before. So they hatch a plot to go break into Cabrini Green
while dressing like they’re going to experience a winter in Russia.
Off for a Siberian winter in ghettoville...
Inside, they find some pictures and graffiti on the wall that all
points toward the larger-than-life Candyman myth that has taken hold of Cabrini
Green – I really like the setting here, and more movies should utilize this
kind of ghetto urbanized city setting for a horror movie plot. Again though,
the movie will eventually even throw this out the window and replace it with
overwrought hokey nonsense masquerading as something “deep.” Doesn’t that sound
fun?
We also get the story of Candyman told by a fat guy who looks like Ben
Franklin’s loser cousin…apparently he was a slave who fell in love with a white
noblewoman and got her pregnant, so a bunch of villagers killed him with bees.
Trouble strikes, however, when Madsen talks to a little boy who tells
her to go look in the public bathroom where some other little kid allegedly got
his balls cut off by the Candyman. She goes inside, finds some bugs using the
toilet, and gives them some privacy:
After that, she’s confronted by some gang members who give her a black
eye for using their favorite bathroom…because a black eye is always the WORST
thing a whole group of violent thugs can do to a vulnerable white woman who
they have cornered! I’m totally convinced!
But seriously, THIS is what I mean when I say the movie had potential!
We could have had a very interesting take on urban legends by having the whole
thing end up a hoax perpetuated by gang members who want to rule the
neighborhood. Maybe some slight
supernatural leanings would have been OK if they were really vague, but if I was re-doing this story, I
sure wouldn’t have gone full-out Nightmare on Elm Street mode after this. Ugh.
What could have been a great commentary on poverty and believing in myths reduced to a third-rate slasher horror movie with as much imagination as a pet rock. That’s great, guys. Just great.
OK, back to the review, back to the review…so after telling on the gang
members, Madsen is confronted again in the parking lot by the real Candyman! He
talks in a cool voice and…that’s really about it. If you thought Pinhead was
too white, or the guy from Lord of Illusions was too lame, well Candyman is for
you!
The Lord of Disappointingly Boring Scenes cometh!
I’m not going to lie…after this scene, the movie just gives up. It
doesn’t even bother to try anymore. The movie just turns into a really bloody
slasher movie with nothing good about it. Disappointment, thy name is Candyman…I’ve
seriously rarely ever seen a movie just up and stop dead in its tracks like this, just cease to be relevant or
meaningful on any level beyond hey, look
at our cool special effects! Well, not since The Dark Knight Rises, anyway.
But I digress again…do you like severed dogs’ heads and screaming,
crying women and lots of blood all over the place? Is that your idea of what
constitutes real fear? Well then you’ll love this scene.
OOH, A DOG'S HEAD! LOOK AT ALL THIS GORE!!!
And there's some BLOOD and KNIVES and SCREAMING and oooh, just so creepy, right?! WE ARE THE EDGY ONES! LOOK AT US AS WE BREAK SOCIAL TABOOS! So violent and gross!
Apparently Madsen has been framed for the murder of a dog, the
kidnapping of a baby and the smearing of a ton of red paint all over the walls…amazing…and
the cops who were previously very understanding to her plight are now total
jackasses without even one inch of any kind of humanity towards her!
After another scene in which the Candyman brutally murders her best
friend for no reason...
This just pisses me off. I know characters die in horror movies, it's just part of the territory, but this was just SO BADLY DONE of a scene! There's a difference between adding kills to scare the audience and just being straight up cruel, which is what this is. Needlessly, relentlessly cruel. Why did this character deserve to be murdered in such a brutal, undignified way? What was her crime outside of being dumb enough to take a minor role in a Clive Barker film? Fuck you, Candyman.
...Madsen is institutionalized and kept there on drugs for a
whole month. The doctor calls her into his office one day seemingly at random, and
to prove that the Candyman is real, she decides to look into the randomly
placed mirror on the wall and say his name five times. Even though she KNOWS HE’S
GOING TO POP UP AND KILL THE GUY…she just does it anyway! What, did the drugs
addle her brain so much that she forgot he was a killing machine? Did she think
he was just going to sit down with them for a polite discussion about how he
framed her for all the murders so far? Oh well, who cares…GORE!
Killing off a random doctor who was just trying to help? Great job, Virginia Madsen...great job...you deserve a Darwin Award at this point. If she had just SHUT HER DAMN MOUTH and NOT summoned him from the mirror, this whole thing could have been avoided.
Then she finds out her husband is shacked up with one of his much
younger students, but really Madsen herself was already a student to begin with…so
really, he just moved from one nubile young woman to another. What a pedophile.
I bet he and that weird priest from Pinocchio’s Revenge would get along fine.
"I actually listen to his confessions every week..."
So she runs off to look at the ocean while Candyman intones some more
pseudo-intellectual poetry over the scene, because that’s really all he’s got
besides framing random young women for murder. He should look into other
hobbies, like doing movie trailer voice-overs, since that one deep-voiced guy
who used to do them has sadly passed away – I think Candyman would be a great
substitute personally. He has just the right amount of dramatic deep-toned
grittiness in his voice...hey, wait, what was I talking about again? The movie is so dull that I actually completely went off topic.
How is a film with this much admittedly decent gore effects so BORING anyway? It's practically the eighth wonder of the world. By all human logic, there should at least be some kind of enjoyment out of how ridiculous and tasteless the gore is, but the tone of the movie is so suffocatingly serious and somber that I can't even enjoy the gore! It just comes off as mean spirited, ugly and unpleasant.
But what the hell is Candyman's plan, anyway? Kill everyone who can help
Virginia Madsen until she goes so crazy that she has to love him? That’s stupid. Almost as stupid as this scene:
Yeah, maybe a better dental plan is in order.
He forces her to come die with him in a big bonfire conveniently
happening that night, only she stabs him with a big burning stake and saves
herself and the kidnapped child. After that, we get a scene of her husband and
his new fuck-buddy hanging out in his apartment as he cries in his room about
how Madsen is dead…how are we supposed to feel bad for the scumbag who just
ditched the woman he married in a time of need to start dating someone probably
not even 21 yet?
"I'm looking in a mirror while wearing a sad expression...aren't I so deep and tormented?"
The movie doesn’t know either, because after that, he says Madsen’s
name five times and she somehow appears to him in ghost-form and kills him with
a hook! The film then ends on a “shocking” gore sequence, which maybe would have been shocking if we hadn't seen the same effects like 12 times by this point...
Aw, man, now she'll have to clean the bathroom and everything!
Are you surprised? I’m not! Why would anyone be at this point? I can think of painful surgical procedures more enjoyable than this movie. How did anyone ever find redeeming qualities in this? All the
decent ideas in the beginning are just thrown in the garbage in favor of
tastelessly done gore that adds nothing to the atmosphere or overall story. The
Candyman himself is dull as hell and doesn't do anything half the time besides just intone boring monologues at a snail's pace, and the whole thing is just a drag to watch,
too, as it tries so hard to be all deep and profound, with all its deep-voiced narrations over wide-panned shots of the city, when really all it is is a
stupid slasher movie huffing and puffing to try and make itself look cooler and more serious.
Candyman is a very nasty, stupid, unpleasant movie with nothing at all to
say and no real value to anyone who wants more out of a film than gore effects
Tom Savini could do better on one of his off days. It doesn't even work as a
gore flick because the whole thing tries so hard like I mentioned – the people
who want some over the top gore will be bored by the attempts at being all
artsy and atmospheric, which are as clumsy and hamfisted as I've ever seen. It pleases neither audience.
This is one of the worst movies I've ever reviewed on this site, and I
feel very confident in saying I cannot see what anyone finds appealing about
it. As a straightforward horror flick it’s a boring plod-along, but as an
attempt at being anything else – anything with more atmosphere or cerebral
satisfaction to its scares – it's just sad and a total waste of brain cells from everyone involved. Candyman can go right to hell and I am glad I will never have to sit through
this crap again!
